


Family Resemblance

by laireshi



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Family, Gen, Misunderstanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 19:49:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18723787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi
Summary: V catalogues all the ways Nero is just like Dante and arrives at an obvious conclusion.





	Family Resemblance

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry but you'll pry the headcanon that this is what V must've thought from my cold, dead hands. (Now if only he remained intact to learn the truth!)

V’s recollection of Nero is fuzzy at the beginning, just someone’s presence, completely irrelevant next to the bright and clear power of Yamato. That’s a blessing, though; the cold awareness that he’s the one who tore the boy’s arm off is bad enough without actually remembering it in vivid details the way he remembers so much else of Vergil’s life.

He doesn’t get it, at first, not the _Devil May Cry_ written on the truck nor Nero’s wild power, undiminished even when he’s one-handed. His hair should be a clue, but the mere idea is so impossible, V disregards it without even thinking . . .

Until he comes face to face with the other part of himself, strong enough to defeateven _Dante_ now that he’s rid himself of his pathetic humanity, proving once and for all that being human is indeed the ultimate weakness. Turns out, Nero’s power doesn’t amount to much against Urizen. Trish and Lady are both down, and Dante’s bleeding and clearly still able to stand only through sheer stubbornness, and yet his order, immediate and completely certain, is, “Get Nero out of here!”

V looks at Nero as if with new eyes as he wrestles him away from the fight.

The boy _is_ like Dante: full of himself and bullheaded and still somehow endearing. 

“Getting protective instincts already, V?” Griffon asks inside his head.

V ignores him, too busy trying to pull Nero out, back to the Red Grave City, back to where they can regroup without immediate threat of death surrounding them.

(Not immediate, but still pretty inevitable, if Dante truly loses, if Nero can’t step up—V curses his human body and his lack of strength and knows he’d never trade it for Urizen’s power and lack of conscience.)

Nero starts moving in the right direction, finally, and Shadow slips under V’s feet to help him move, and they make it out.

***

He doesn’t get many chances to think about Nero, or Dante, or _how_ and _why_ , or how Nero clearly doesn’t know and yet Dante does—so like his brother, to shuck off all the responsibility, V scoffs.

But did he really? Nero got in on the family business, after all, even got the Yamato like a fucking curse—

“Get out of your head, V!” Griffon scoffs him, and V realises it’s time for him to finish off the demons surrounding them.

Chances of Dante being alive to ask him about Nero are slim. V shouldn’t squander them by his own untimely demise because he gets distracted.

“So impatient, Griffon,” V tells him as he moves around the battlefield.

***

There’s another thing that should’ve tipped him off, and maybe would’ve, if only he’d had more time, but Nero, swinging his sword and changing it for a gun in the middle of a fight is a familiar sight . . . and an uneasy one, somehow. V feels _guilty_ at involving the boy in this.

He didn’t have a choice, he tells himself, over and over, and Nero _is_ strong, and yet—he’s having his _nephew_ fight for him. That’s not right.

“What, do I have demon gunk on my face?” Nero asks. “You keep staring at me.”

V chuckles. “ _If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is._ ”

“That supposed to mean something?”

“You don’t have demon gunk on your face,” V tells him. “Pretty much everywhere else though.”

The reckless style, still unpolished, and yet so much like Dante’s. He actually reminds V of Dante some twenty years ago, on Temen-ni-gru. Maybe if he’d carried his hair longer, the resemblance would be even more obvious. It wasn’t like Vergil and Dante actually had grown up together through their teenage years into early adulthood for V to know what Dante might’ve acted like at different stages of his life. His face, V would always know intimately, but not much more after so many years apart.

Nero’s looking at him like he expects more answers, so V says, “Let’s move on.”

***

Even through his terror, it annoys V that bloody _Malphas_ could feel it immediately when she seizes up Nero to spit, “Sparda’s kin,” at him. He could’ve felt the Devil Sword Sparda’s presence, but he wasn’t himself enough to feel the blood in Nero’s veins.

She underestimates Nero, at least, which is a good thing—not that he needs help, no; that’s V’s role here, being weak and helpless like a kid. 

Nero doesn’t say a word about that, later; he merely tells V to _rest_. Like he cares, like he—

V has to go on. It’s not a choice for him, it’s never been a choice.

And Nero—Nero is kind; kinder than Dante is, kinder than V could ever hope to be. He pulls V’s arm around his shoulders, and it hurts, but so does breathing at the moment, and he helps V walk, helps him get where he needs to be even if he doesn’t know _why_. 

In another life, could Vergil have seen him grow up?

V waits for Griffon’s taunt, but it doesn’t come. A proof, more than anything else, of how weak V’s gotten. He knows he’s leaning against Nero more with each step, but Nero doesn’t complain. 

Maybe it’s how closely Nero resembles Dante that V starts speaking. Maybe it’s just that he knows he’s dying, and whatever happens next, whether his plan pays off or not, he, in this form, will be gone.

“The truth is . . . I wanted to be protected and loved . . . But I was alone. My only choice was to survive. ” He falls down, coughing.

“V, you gotta rest,” Nero says, again; not answering V’s words as such, and yet . . . If only someone had told Vergil that, years ago.

If only he’d had family. But he can only think of that now, a discarded, unwanted human part of Vergil, too late seeing what he’d lost by chance and what by his own hand. 

Maybe he could’ve had a family too.

Idle thoughts, good for nothing. Vergil had carved his own path and V couldn’t right all his wrongs.

V stands up, slowly, shaking all over. He has to finish it. He _has to_. And Nero deserves _some_ answers, if V is too much of a coward to provide all of them.

He looks at Nero and tells him about Vergil.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic also has a [tumblr](https://laireshi.tumblr.com/post/184674872267/family-resemblance) and a [twitter](https://twitter.com/tonytears/status/1125154009667592192) post.


End file.
